Predatory Publishing: What is it?

This guide is just that: a guide. Ultimately it is up to each author to make the final decision on where to publish and to decide what they expect from his or her publishers.

Thanks to Dr. Judit H. Ward of Rutgers University for permission to adapt her LibGuide as the basis for this one.

This guide was created to help answer the following questions, upon receiving an invitation from a publisher:

• Should I publish my article in a particular journal?
• Should I pay article processing charges to publish in an Open Access journal?
• Should I accept the invitation to serve on the editorial board of a particular journal?
• Should I accept the invitation to be a keynote speaker at a particular conference?

Coined by Jeffrey Beall, a former librarian at the Auraria Library, University of Denver, the term "predatory publishing" refers to a questionable business practice of charging fees to authors to publish their articles without standard editorial and publishing services provided by legitimate scholarly journals.  It is also known as deceptive publishing.

Be wary of predatory conferences as well.